Kids have been telling their secrets to their toys forever. Now kids can have a back-and-forth conversation with Hello Barbie using WiFi and speech recognition technology, but is she a spy for research?

You may remember Hello Barbie made the news back in March due to privacy concerns. The new Hello Barbie comes with new technology including voice recognition so she can speak to your child and give chatty responses. She can remember the name of your child's best friend even the name of the family dog. According to the Washington Post, privacy advocates are crying foul.

Hello Barbie works by recording a child's voice with an embedded microphone that is triggered by pressing a button on the doll. As the doll "listens," audio recordings travel over the Web to a server where the snippets of speech are recognized and processed. That information is used to help form Hello Barbie's responses.

"If I had a young child, I would be very concerned that my child's intimate conversations with her doll were being recorded and analyzed," Angela Campbell, faculty adviser at Georgetown University's Center on Privacy and Technology, said in a statement.

The Washington Post reports Mattel and ToyTalk, the San Francisco-based start-up that created the technology used in the doll, say the privacy and security of the technology have been their top priority. "Mattel is committed to safety and security, and Hello Barbie conforms to applicable government standards," Mattel said in a statement.

Now Vigilant Citizen is reporting about a "Hell No Barbie" campaign seeking to inform consumers that this doll has the potential to severely violate their privacy. Here are the process parents have to take to get Hello Barbie up and running.

Downloading an app on a smartphone, creating an account using an e-mail address, connecting the doll to the home’s Wi-Fi network, etc. In short, well-meaning parents are actually taken through the steps required to turn this toy into a highly effective spy device that can pinpoint, with exact accuracy, who said what, at what time and where to then store all of that information on remote databases.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) plans to launch a “Hell No Barbie” campaign on social media and its website, warning parents and children to keep their distance from the doll.

Hello Barbie's talk isn't cheap. Her 8000 lines of recorded content have a big price tag.

Is this a toy you want for your child? Please let us know in the comment section below.

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